An arbitration group on Wednesday ordered MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell’s firm to pay $5 million to a Nevada man after Lindell made a 2021 offer in the same amount to anyone who could prove his election fraud claims wrong.
Lindell made the offer in a 2021 challenge called “Prove Mike Wrong.” Lindell claimed he had data showing the Chinese government interfered in the 2020 election, and offered a $5 million prize to anyone who could prove him incorrect. He said the data were “packet captures” that showed China undeniably interfered in the election, The Washington Post reported Thursday.
The “Prove Mike Wrong” challenge rules instructed participants to prove the data provided “does NOT reflect information related to the November 2020 election,” according to the April 19 arbitration ruling obtained by The Post. Lindell presented the data at a symposium in North Dakota in August 2021. Participants were provided PDFs and “text files,” among other file formats, the ruling shows.
New: Mike Lindell offered $5m to anyone who could disprove his claim to have data showing China interfered in the 2020 election.
A Nevada man did just that. But Lindell refused to pay. Now an arbitration panel has ordered Lindell to hand over the $5m. https://t.co/Wz4RDrNNjL
— Jon Swaine (@jonswaine) April 20, 2023
Software developer Robert Zeidman of Nevada analyzed the data and found it did not line up with Lindell’s claims, according to The Post. After Lindell’s company allegedly refused to pay the prize, Zeidman took the matter to arbitrators.
Members of the not-for-profit American Arbitration Association ruled Zeidman had indeed disproved Lindell’s election fraud claim, and that Lindell was obliged to pay him the $5 million within 30 days. Zeidman “proved the data Lindell LLC provided, and represented reflected information from the November 2020 election, unequivocally did not reflect November 2020 election data,” according to the ruling.
“They clearly saw this as I did — that the data we were given at the symposium was not at all what Mr. Lindell said it was,” Zeidman told WaPo. (RELATED: ‘This Is Different’: Alan Dershowitz Explains Why FBI’s Treatment Of Mike Lindell Is So ‘Scary’)
Zeidman told CNBC in an interview he knew the data was fabricated as soon as he got ahold of it. He began to question the legitimacy of the data upon close inspection, saying he “got a [Microsoft] Word document which was basically a big table of numbers,” according to the outlet.
“This was obviously manufactured bogus data,” Zeidman added, still noting he is a “right-wing conservative” who cast a vote for former President Donald Trump in 2016 and 2020.
“They made a terribly wrong decision! This will be going to court!” Lindell said via a text to The Post.